2022: It all came down to turnout

Plus: How a third party might help Trump, The Liberal Patriot's new polling project, Trump's Evangelical problem in Iowa, confidence in higher education down sharply

No. 275 | July 14, 2023

🗳️ Elections

Hannah Hartig, Andrew Daniller, Scott Keeter and Ted Van Green: Republican Gains in 2022 Midterms Driven Mostly by Turnout Advantage (Pew Research Center)

“In midterm elections that yielded mixed results for both parties, Republicans won the popular vote for the U.S. House of Representatives largely on the strength of higher turnout.

A new Pew Research Center analysis of verified voters and nonvoters in 2022, 2020, 2018 and 2016 finds that partisan differences in turnout – rather than vote switching between parties – account for most of the Republican gains in voting for the House last year.

Overall, 68% of those who voted in the 2020 presidential election turned out to vote in the 2022 midterms. Former President Donald Trump’s voters turned out at a higher rate in 2022 (71%) than did President Joe Biden’s voters (67%).”

Nate Cohn: What Really Happened in the Midterms? (The New York Times 🔒)

“More than eight months later, all the data from the 2022 midterm elections is — finally — final. The two most rigorous reports, from the Pew Research Center and Catalist, are finished. And yet despite all the data, there is a piece of the midterm puzzle that still hasn’t quite been resolved: How exactly did the Democrats manage to nearly sweep every competitive House and Senate race, even though they often fared quite miserably elsewhere?

The Catalist report suggested it was the turnout, finding that Democrats won “with electorates in these contests looking more like the 2020 and 2018 electorates than a typical midterm.” Pew also pointed to turnout, but with a different interpretation, writing that Republicans won control of the House “largely on the strength of higher turnout,” and found that disproportionate numbers of Biden voters and Democrats from 2018 stayed home.”

Geoffrey Skelley: Why A Third-Party Candidate Might Help Trump — And Spoil The Election For Biden

“We don’t need to have major-party presidential nominees to have a conversation about a third-party spoiler candidate affecting the 2024 presidential election. Faced with the prospect of a rematch between President Biden and former President Donald Trump, at least two alternatives have already emerged: The bipartisan No Labels organization is working toward fielding a centrist presidential ticket, while Cornel West, a well-known public intellectual and political progressive, has launched a bid for the Green Party’s nomination.

These efforts have Democrats fretting that both bids could garner support from voters who might otherwise back Biden against Trump, thereby boosting Trump’s chances of winning. So what do we know about the situations in which third-party bids become spoiler campaigns?”

Jonathan Chait: Non-white Moderates Are Real Democrats — Not GOP Pawns (Intelligencer)

“The recent Supreme Court ruling striking down affirmative action once again highlighted an uncomfortable reality that a minority group (in this case, Asian Americans) mostly opposes a position held by the progressive movement and the Democratic Party. The response from the left was to depict Asian Americans — who, polls show, oppose the use of racial preferences in college admissions to increase diversity — as dupes or tools being used by white conservatives to attack other vulnerable minorities.

‘The promise of proximity to whiteness and power has radicalized some Asian Americans on the right,’ noted an NPR story that approvingly cited scholars who instructed that the conservative litigants ‘pitted Asian Americans against Black and Latino communities.’ A Vox piece complained that, once again, ‘Asian Americans are cited by white conservatives to put down other minorities.’ But the reality is that most Asian Americans oppose racial preferences in education — by a 15-point margin, according to a Pew poll from last month — for perfectly cogent reasons that have nothing to do with white conservative manipulation.”

Ruy Teixeira: The Democratic Party Left vs. the Center (The Liberal Patriot)

“On Tuesday, John Halpin introduced our new survey project on the important issues and political ideas shaping the 2024 presidential election. He recounted some of the findings from our initial 3,000 voter survey, the first of five we plan to do over the next year or so.

I’ll do the same here, focusing on a set of questions we asked to tap voters’ views on three culturally freighted issues that are sure to loom large in the impending campaign: immigration, climate, and transgender controversies. The data strongly indicate that Democrats’ positions on these issues appear to correspond closely to the views of the left of the party but not to the views of the rest of the electorate, especially those voters who occupy the electorate’s center ground.”

John Halpin: Introducing the 2024 Patriot Index (The Liberal Patriot)

“The Liberal Patriot (TLP) is pleased to present the results from our first round of polling—conducted with our good partners at YouGov—examining the most important issues and political ideas shaping the 2024 presidential election. TLP and YouGov plan to do five waves of research through the early part of next year, each wave including around 3000 interviews with registered voters for a total study covering more than 15,000 Americans by the time primary voting begins in earnest next year.

The results of the poll are available to everyone, and we encourage people to dive into these fascinating results. We plan to roll out analysis of this research in a series of posts over the next two weeks.”

Shelby Talcott: Donald Trump may have an evangelical problem in Iowa (Semafor)

“If there’s a glimmer of hope for Ron DeSantis and the rest of the Republican field hoping to defeat Donald Trump, it was in a focus group of evangelical voters in Iowa on Thursday night.

Trump, much of the group argued, did positive things during his presidency — and they agreed with him on many points. But, save for a few participants, they weren’t thrilled with him taking office again: Some said it was time to make way for a new face, while others cited his drama, his baggage, and his need to please people as reasons they were considering other options. One voter said he should apologize for Operation Warp Speed.

The event, which featured eighteen voters, was hosted by pollster and communication strategist Frank Luntz. It came on the eve of Friday’s social conservative cattle call for 2024 candidates put on by The Family Leader in Des Moines, which Trump is not attending.”

Seth Masket: There’s Good News and Bad News for Trump in a New Survey (Politico)

“Former President Donald Trump is making steady gains among Republican grassroots leaders. He’s the dominant force in the GOP presidential campaign. But he doesn’t have the nomination locked up. That’s according to my latest poll of GOP county chairs from across the country. Even as Trump continues to build a real lead over his rivals, a large Republican contingent is undecided and remains open to other candidates.

My survey of GOP county chairs is part of an ongoing effort to track the so-called ‘invisible primary’ for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, with a series that is being featured in POLITICO Magazine over the next year. What takes place during the invisible primary is the crucial coordination and jockeying that occurs before anyone starts voting or caucusing, but which will do much to determine the eventual winner.”

📊  Public Opinion

Megan Brenan: Americans' Confidence in Higher Education Down Sharply (Gallup)

“Americans’ confidence in higher education has fallen to 36%, sharply lower than in two prior readings in 2015 (57%) and 2018 (48%). In addition to the 17% of U.S. adults who have ‘a great deal’ and 19% “quite a lot” of confidence, 40% have ‘some’ and 22% ‘very little’ confidence.

The latest decline in the public’s trust in higher education is from a June 1-22 Gallup poll that also found confidence in 16 other institutions has been waning in recent years. Many of these entities, which are tracked more often than higher education, are now also at or near their lowest points in confidence. Although diminished, higher education ranks fourth in confidence among the 17 institutions measured, with small business, the military and the police in the top three spots. This was also the case in 2018, the last time higher education was included in the list of institutions.”

👫 Demographics

@LettieriDC: This image says a great deal about the future of America’s economy, politics, and culture. (Twitter)

🗺️ Data Visualization

Laura Beamer and Marshall Steinbaum: America’s Student Loans Were Never Going to Be Repaid (The New York Times)

“In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, the federal government stopped requiring regular payments of student loan debt — a pause that has lasted more than three years. But student loan repayment had been dwindling for at least a decade before the pause.

You can imagine the stock of outstanding student debt as an overflowing bathtub: More students purchasing more undergraduate and advanced degrees at increasing tuition prices is the water gushing out of the faucet, and non-repayment is a blockage in the drain. The drain is blocked because despite what economists, policy-makers and educational administrators claim, a college degree doesn’t always pay off.”